Beloved Poison
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Set in a crumbling 1850s London infirmary, a richly atmospheric Victorian crime novel where murder is the price to be paid for secrets kept.
Ramshackle and crumbling, trapped in the past and resisting the future, St. Saviour’s Infirmary awaits demolition. Within its stinking wards and cramped corridors, the doctors bicker and backstab. Ambition, jealousy, and loathing seethe beneath the veneer of professional courtesy. Always an outsider, and with a secret of her own to hide, apothecary Jem Flockhart observes everything but says nothing.
And then six tiny coffins are uncovered, inside each a handful of dried flowers and a bundle of mouldering rags. When Jem comes across these strange relics hidden inside the infirmary’s old chapel, her quest to understand their meaning prises open a long-forgotten past—with fatal consequences.
In a trail that leads from the bloody world of the operating room and the dissecting table to the notorious squalor of Newgate Prison and the gallows, Jem’s adversary proves to be both powerful and ruthless. As St. Saviour’s destruction draws near, the dead are unearthed from their graves while the living are forced to make impossible choices. And murder is the price to be paid for the secrets to be kept.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rich atmospherics and a Dickensian portrayal of the underbelly of Victorian London elevate Scottish author Thomson's superb whodunit above most other historical debuts. Jem Flockhart, an apothecary at St. Saviour's Infirmary, has successfully passed herself off as a man in order to work alongside her father, continuing a family tradition in medicine that dates back a century. Meanwhile, the hospital governors have agreed that to sell the property to make way for a railway bridge, which necessitates emptying its graveyard, an unpleasant task delegated to junior architect William Quatermain. And, in the midst of that upheaval, one of the infirmary's doctors is fatally poisoned, a crime that Jem believes is linked to her discovery of six tiny coffins, each containing a blood-stained doll. Some of the coffins are lined with papers with cryptic writing, including a reference to the date Jem's mother died giving birth to her. Thomson excels in evoking the claustrophobic feel of the back alleys Jem must tread in search of the truth. The plot builds to a logical but surprising reveal.
